


Headstone

by PrettyArbitrary



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, M/M, Touchstone Universe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-08
Updated: 2012-11-08
Packaged: 2017-11-18 06:12:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,076
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/557787
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PrettyArbitrary/pseuds/PrettyArbitrary
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>John, John, don’t give up.</i>
</p>
<p>A story set in Machshefa's luminous <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/309343">Touchstone universe</a>, with her gracious permission.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Headstone

**Author's Note:**

  * For [machshefa](https://archiveofourown.org/users/machshefa/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Touchstone](https://archiveofourown.org/works/309343) by [machshefa](https://archiveofourown.org/users/machshefa/pseuds/machshefa). 



> Set in Machshefa's luminous [Touchstone universe](http://archiveofourown.org/works/309343), with her gracious permission. Specifically, it's a partner piece to "[I leave a trail of breadcrumbs to show you where I've been](http://archiveofourown.org/works/323574)." I promised her this, um, in early Spring? And finally I got around to finishing it!

When Sherlock comes to London, he visits his grave.

It’s selfish to come here like this, to take without giving, not to mention foolishly risky. But his friends—he may as well admitting to having them, now, since Moriarty already cut each of their names out of him in chunks—pile their hearts up in glittering pebbles before his headstone, and Sherlock can’t stop himself from coming here to feel the warmth he never let himself bask in when he had the chance.

It’s so lonely, this thing he’s doing. Even if he wanted to, he couldn’t afford to share himself. He has no one close enough to him to touch his wishstones, to understand him. No true human contact, only the cold impersonality of common physical touch. 

It’s as if he never met John, never learned how to open his heart. He spent so long unable to wish that now, with no one to reach out to, it doesn’t seem real that he can. Some days the panic chokes him, that it’s all in his head, that he’s forgotten how again, that there’s nothing left of him to share and no one waiting and no reason to come back home.

That’s why he has to return to his grave: to remind himself that it’s real, that he can feel, that there is a purpose to all this. That John is more than a trick of his mind.

The stones lie scattered before his headstone in a tiny, glittering rock garden. Compared to the riches heaped on other graves nearby, this is a sparse offering, but it’s more than Sherlock ever expected or, perhaps, deserved. It’s a bounty of love and well wishes from everyone in the world whose opinion matters, and Sherlock has to touch, even as he mocks himself for his self-indulgence. He needs to hear them, to know that they’re alright.

Mrs Hudson’s first. He knows it’s hers before he even touches it. The jade gives her away, a calm old matriarch presiding over the small riot of emotion spread across his grave.

_Rest in peace,_ she bids him. 

It’s a wish infused with an understanding of love and loss polished smooth by the passage of years. Her strength seeps in to fill the cold gaps of his soul with an old woman’s endurance and the patience of a lifetime of experience. If only he could take her stone with him.

He closes his eyes, and pockets the tiger’s eye that drops from his hands in answer. It’s a promise to himself. One day, he’ll give it to her, and let her know his gratitude for the strength she gave him.

Molly’s amazonite speaks the same words she said to him when she helped him slip out of her morgue. _Good hunting. Come back safe._

That, at least, he thanked her for. Sacrifice has finally beaten _some_ graciousness into him.

The little heap of lapis gleams a deep burnished blue that would be the colour of Lestrade’s soul, if Sherlock were to crack him open. Sherlock is hard to surprise, but the sheer number of stones startles him. Lestrade must visit more than once a month to have created this pile. _My friend,_ repeated over and over again in a tiny blue rock garden of faith, a pile of blessings and ‘good travels.’ Wishes for protection for Sherlock’s soul, because Lestrade believes he failed to protect him in body.

Mycroft’s, Sherlock doesn’t touch. The sapphire glints too bright and knowing.

Which only leaves…the stones that are missing.

For a horrible, stomach-twisting instant, Sherlock can’t spot John’s, and two equally terrifying scenarios flash through his mind: either John has not come…or John can’t make stones. 

John told Sherlock, once, how he lost the ability after Afghanistan. 

But before his mind can go any further, Sherlock’s eyes fall on the disturbed soil before the headstone, dug into by prodding fingers. Relief floods him. 

He manages to hold himself back for all of ten seconds. He _knows_ he doesn’t dare look, let alone touch, but the thought of John’s wishes lying buried there in the dust, never seen or heard, lost in the dark and _unanswered_ …

He’s on his knees before he knows it, fingers groping into the soft earth. He feels the gems before he sees them, waves of _hope-love-need-grief-Iwaslost-youmademebetter_ crashing over him, and finds himself gasping through his open mouth. They _hurt._ John’s wishes _hurt._

They’re bitter things, when he pulls them out and cradles them; wishes that can’t come true. They cry out in his hands—‘be better; be safe; be happy’—and Sherlock shares their agony at the thought of John, shedding wishes like tears because he doesn’t cry, does he? Not John. Sherlock knows him. He comes here to sit silently, bleeding colour that speaks for him with no one in the world to hear, and then he buries each thought and wish with the man he believes they died with.

One day they’ll all be gone, his final wish born and dead and buried, and John’s skin will be white and lifeless, that great heart of his with nothing left worth wanting.

The colour wells up in Sherlock’s fingers before he even thinks about it, because he can’t bear that, the thought of John barren and colourless, nothing left to say because he has no one to say it to, nothing left to hope for because the one thing he ever wanted is—

_John, John, don’t give up._

Sherlock looks down at the stone crystallising in his palm. He shouldn’t leave it. It’s so terribly risky. But he cradles the polished turquoise in his hand and knows that if he doesn’t, then there’s no point to anything he’s doing; there won’t be anything left of John to save.

Sherlock nestles the turquoise carefully in the earth, and takes John’s sad wishes with him. Their pain isn’t for him. He can make them better. He has always been the one to fix John.

The next time he visits, almost a year later, the pile of lapis is bigger. The jade is still there, presiding like a weary matriarch over its little, gleaming populace. The sod he so carefully pulled back has been disrupted again.

Sherlock frowns and peels it back gingerly. The turquoise is gone. In its place, a diamond catches fire in the dreary spring light.

Sherlock brushes a finger over it, and hears John’s heart whisper, _Forever._


End file.
